A first course in Operating Systems with and without rubrics

We are in charge of the Introduction to Operating Systems course at the school of Engineering of the University of Buenos Aires (FIUBA) and in a sister institution. Both courses are developed in parallel and placed in the same semester of the program. Each course has a different set of teaching assistants. To overcome overcrowded classes and lack of interaction time, at FIUBA we decided to use a rubric in the grading of the programming assistant. Teaching assistants at the other institution do not lack interaction time and courses are a lot less crowded, so they discarded the rubric idea regarding it as bureaucratic burden. We assumed that the exposure to the rubrics experience will make some sort of difference. We decided to use the same programming assignments and the same final exams in both institutions in order to make the experiences comparable. Our findings are presented and discussed in this paper.